I often talk about the importance of elegance in design. However, the most straightforward individual designs can sometimes massively complicate the overall game. Nowhere has this been more apparent to me than in studying Yu-Gi-Oh’s cardpool. Many of their cards are forced into microtext sizes with an absurd number of added effects and qualifiers. It […]

I’m back home for vacation and playing a lot of tabletop games with my friends and family. While a  lot of my friends are deep-dive hardcore gamers, my family tends to look at a tabletop and think “coffee and conversation” rather than “dungeons and dragons”. Here’s the thing: My family often enjoys games of deep […]

Someone recently asked me why game developers are obsessed with using Apocalypse settings. Are they just creatively bankrupt? Here was my answer: Apocalypse settings are the equivalent of fertile soil. They naturally lend themselves to an environment which is good for game development: 1) Few characters that you feel a desire to talk to (most […]

Hating on The Force Awakens has seen a new surge with South Park comically blaming the film for all of 2016’s problems. Critics accuse the film of just being poorly repackaged nostalgia moments from A New Hope, while supporters insist the movie is a well made film that works on its own. Where does this […]

Super Mario Run charged out on December 15th, three days ago as of this writing. While its sales have skyrocketed as we’d expect, the game is currently suffering a shocking 2.5 star rating. However, these low ratings mask a brilliant game. While players rightly complain about the monetization structure, always-online requirements, and other issues surrounding the […]

So I got a tweet over the weekend that read thusly. @DesignerDanF All I want for Christmas is to find out what happened in Ravenshadow! pic.twitter.com/oa6UeBQp5z — Alpha Bromega (@birdlikeman) December 11, 2016 So I decided to play santa. I recorded the next episode in the series the same day, which focuses on how tragedies […]

It’s very easy to make a game that never has a balance problem. I’ve done it multiple times. Heck, even back in college a team and I worked together to make a whole pen and paper RPG called Wanderlust that was so balanced the strongest characters you could create in it were only 8% more […]

You know the device. You start with some tense and possibly wacky scene. Then the screen fades to black and the title card pops up: “One Week Earlier”. You’re now back in a comfortable scene and wondering how on earth the strange circumstance in the opening came about. This is a great technique. It’s also […]